San Diego Opera officials seeking millions in government grants painted a picture of financial health over the past few years — a time during which financial troubles were well known inside the organization.

In a 2012 application to the city of San Diego the opera noted — as it did in each year the company sought funding — that the organization had a balanced budget for 25 years and that the opera was in “remarkably excellent fiscal health.”

Now preparing for shutdown with funds near complete depletion, the group's leaders say they knew of financial troubles internally for years.

Minutes of a fateful March 19 meeting at which directors voted 33-1 to cease operations record General and Artistic Director Ian Campbell telling the board that “these financial matters have been brought to the board for years, and that the staff had been going to major donors to explain the situation with no results.”

At that meeting the opera’s board of directors decided to close down following its run of “Don Quixote,” ending this coming Sunday. Since then, the shutdown has been extended two weeks while a faction of board members seeks an alternative to closure.

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Board members met again for three hours on Friday and emerged with no change to the planned closure date of April 29. A committee of board members will meet with experts from Opera America, an industry group, to explore options in ongoing efforts to save the company or re-establish it after closure.

Another meeting is set for Thursday. The new committee will be chaired by Carol Lazier, a board member who last week donated $1 million to the opera to explore options and encourage the board to rescind the closure vote.

The opera has been releasing more information about its finances and the mid-six-figure contracts of its executives, which have been controversial given the current situation.

Among those at Friday’s meeting was former county Supervisor Pam Slater-Price, a fan who shepherded almost a million dollars of county funds to the organization over her term in office.

“We are all hopeful,” she said after the meeting. “We would all love to see it stay, we would love to see it continue. But we need dollars.”

In all, the opera has received $2.9 million in government support over the past five years, records show.

The bulk came from the city, which has contributed $1.9 million through its Commission for Arts and Culture. The opera generally ranked among the three top recipients of funding from the commission. For this fiscal year the opera was awarded $389,357.

The county, through two separate grant programs, gave $990,918 to the organization, much of that at the behest of Slater-Price.

The opera also got grant money from several other government agencies. Chula Vista gave $6,500 over the past two years for the opera’s “Words and Music” program that brings opera to high school students. Encinitas gave $15,870 for a school program, and the California Arts Council awarded the group $41,540 from 2009 to 2013.